Friday, May 27, 2016

I’m
generally not the most organized
person. I don’t keep a date book. I don’t record my travel expenses on a
regular basis. I cram all my receipts into my wallet or dump them in a pile on
my file cabinet.

And I’m
lucky if I file twice a year.

In
general, I warn my students that the teacher’s desk is the last place they should leave their stuff because there it will get lost.

I mean, really—the
lazy part of my brain wants to say—this is fantasy. I haven’t bothered to
invent a calendar for their world so why should I have to keep track of it?

But, you
know, I do.

If you
read a lot of modern YA, you’ve probably noticed that time-wise, the genre tends
to run on the short side. For the author, this has a lot of allure. You get to
fully flesh out the scenes. Nobody complains about your transitions. The pace
should feel fast.

And for
some books this works astoundingly well. The
Outsiders by S.E. Hinton being my favorite example.

But
limiting your time frame also causes problems. Relationships can feel rushed,
non-genuine, or superficial. You never get the long-term payoff you can grasp
from a great coming-of-age novel. And vast, sweeping developments within the
world? They don’t really feel real.

Don’t get
me wrong. I love YA. I really, really
do.

But most
of my plotlines refuse to stick within a single week or a month.

And this
means, things get messy.

Especially
when you’re traveling on horseback across an entire country. And when news has
to travel the same way.

Because in
order for the followers of character A to run into the minions of character B
at EXACTLY the most heinous possible time, I have to know the timeline for everything.